Kate Middletonis showing her support for young parents.
The royal mom of three, 37, paid a visit to Sunshine House Children and Young People’s Health and Development Centre in London on Thursday to learn more about a nursing initiative that supports families and children in the early years.
The voluntary home visiting program for first-time parents — ages 24 and under — links parents with a specially-trained family nurse who visits them regularly, from early pregnancy until their child is 2.
Kate’s visit was to “further her research and engagement with the Early Years sector” her office at Kensington Palace said. The Family Nurse Partnership supports young mothers to have a healthy pregnancy, improve their child’s health and development and attain their goals for their child and their family.
Shutterstock
One of those professionals, Kate Stanley, from the children’s charity the NSPCC, told PEOPLE earlier this month that Kate “has identified very shrewdly that if you want to tackle the root causes of all mental health then looking at the early years is a great place to be. It is a critical period of of development, lays the foundations for later life for both our physical health and mental health. It’s a natural progression from that interest.”
Kate has a “really strong interest therefore in how you can support mothers and fathers in the earliest months of life of a child and during pregnancy in order to make sure that brain architecture was well supported. And a real compassion about the challenges of that and desire to understand the experiences of the families that some of the people around the table work with.”
She is also finding her own voice in her royal work in writing her own speeches, including one she delivered Tuesday in which she said, “As a parent, I have learned just how important it is to foster our children’s development, in all areas, not just physical, as soon as they are born.”
When it comes to her own three children, Kate is “so hands-on and involved with everything,” asource recently told PEOPLE.
“She wants to emulate her upbringing, living in the countryside with a close-knit family,” a friend of the royal told PEOPLE. “She desperately wants that normality for her own kids.”
source: people.com
